101 Uses For is popular and let's hope it stays that way. Our second book is presently called 101 tips for self sufficiency; we will certainly dip into this section for ideas. So post away and let's try and get at least one thread up to 101.

Thurston Garden wrote:Although I avoid supermarkets personally when I can, I had first hand evidence that they do have their place. Shopping habits on the whole have changed significantly in the last couple of decades and no mater what we ishers think, the majority of the public choose to use supermarkets. A few in this thread have said that they don't have much option but to use them, but on the whole, supermarkets dont force people through their doors. People make a choice, and the majority choose to use them.

We have a local situation where the local market is struggling and between the council and the traders there's little agreement what needs to be done. The local paper interviewed a sample of the shoppers at the market and it's interesting to note that they only interviewed women, the youngest was 60-something and the oldest 80-something. If that's representative of the shooping population that attends the market I can immediately see the problem - their trade is dying because their customer base is literally dying.

Did I forget to mention that the market is held on a Tuesday morning for historic reasons? Certainly must be historic reasons, because it couldn't possibly be commercial. For the same historic reasons the very small Saturday market is also dying because it's traditional pitch is about the size of a handkerchief and stuck out on one end of town away from the main shopping area and well beyond the main carparks, whilst the Tuesday market has a couple of acres of open marketplace carpark to expand into.

There are not many working shoppers that can shop on a Tuesday morning. There are not many butchers, bakers or indeed candlestick makers that are open when you come off shift at 10pm or 6am (or on nights I decide I can't sleep so go and do the shopping at 2am). So supermarkets will have their place. And traditional shops and markets can no longer rely on the "we are here, they will come" approach to developing sales.

Oh, and the traditional market traders are up in arms because an independent group of market traders has negotiated all-week picthes in the middle of the main shopping centre and are doing very nicely. Sums it up really, traditional traders are going to have to think nontraditional thoughts to prosper.

OK - I'll admit it. I use a supermarket through choice. Like many people, I work long hours. The thought of spending the whole of every Saturday morning driving into the centre of town, fighting for an expensive parking place, traipsing round from one shop to another, queueing in each, having to pay separately instead of just once before fighting my way back home, just to buy food - no thank you. There's a good-enough Co-op at the end of my street. I can walk there, buy as much food as I can carry and be back home within 25 minutes. For anything they don't stock, there's a Morrisons about 20 minutes' walk in a different direction.

The fact is that the supermarkets are here to stay. I don't think there's any point fighting the general concept of them - they're not going to go away. There are always places where they don't fit in and won't be wanted. Fight that by all means - I have done so. Otherwise, surely it's better to put energy into getting the supermarkets to do what's right? More of them are coming round to the idea that sustainable is better: better conditions for workers, more organic choice, less packaging, etc.

The supermarkets wield an awful lot of power down the supply chain, from the packaging manufacturers to intensive and organic agriculture. Convince them to do the right thing and a lot of the world's problems could be solved.

narmour wrote:They seem to prefer produce from half way round the world to our own home grown stuff

I don't understand that. Why IS is more expensive to buy something from here? Even if things are cheaper in other countries, there's still the storage, transport etc that they have to pay to get their stuff here in the first place. Also, why does it cost so much to buy a handful of berries, in the supermarkets anyway, when the same things can grow with minimum effort by even not-particularly-enthusiastic gardeners, or even hedgegrows and such places? We had good crops of raspberries that had come from our neighbour's garden when I was growing up and we did nothing to them, blackberries can be found easily growing successfully all by themselves, plums and apples can be found growing on towpaths, verges, etc., producing decent amounts of fruits, for the most part, without interference! Why SHOULD we pay more for British products just because they are British - it's not our job to support those businesses - we have meagre budgets and once our money is gone, it's gone - those producers should be pricing things accordingly and if they have genuine reasons why they can't, the Government should arrange it so that they can.

daffodiltulip wrote:Also, why does it cost so much to buy a handful of berries, in the supermarkets anyway, when the same things can grow with minimum effort by even not-particularly-enthusiastic gardeners, or even hedgegrows and such places? We had good crops of raspberries that had come from our neighbour's garden when I was growing up and we did nothing to them, blackberries can be found easily growing successfully all by themselves, plums and apples can be found growing on towpaths, verges, etc., producing decent amounts of fruits, for the most part, without interference!

Serious answer about the berries: picking and handling and shipping them tends to make them go squish, which leads to lots of wastage, which means that they have to account for that. And then even the ones that don't get squished don't last more than a few days, so there's more wastage. You're basically paying for all those wasted berries as well as the ones you actually get. The perfect fruit for large-scale commercial distribution would be about 10cm across, solid, cube-shaped, unbruisable, and the same colour when ripe as unripe. None of these things are true of berries.